


Twice As Fun With Someone To Share

by singing_to_empty_caves



Series: That's What Bein' A Friend Is About [8]
Category: Mother 1 | EarthBound Zero | EarthBound Beginnings
Genre: It's Halloween, ana's religious, he's 12 and he's just super lanky and awkward, how would he sing the eight melodies if his voice was already changing, lloyd gives math lessons, lloyd is still trying to come to terms with, ninten is a soprano, ninten makes fun of himself to get ana to laugh, or spookane, welcome to the world of the particular translation i played, well a lot of things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-12
Updated: 2020-04-12
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:07:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23616472
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/singing_to_empty_caves/pseuds/singing_to_empty_caves
Summary: Lloyd's starting to feel alienated as the group seeks out the fourth melody. Thankfully, the Rosemary Manor teaches him that friendship doesn't look the same for everyone, and Ninten wants to make both of his friends happy.
Relationships: Ana/Ninten (Mother 1), lloyd/ninten (one-sided)
Series: That's What Bein' A Friend Is About [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1524248
Comments: 12
Kudos: 17





	Twice As Fun With Someone To Share

“So… wait, dividing by one a’ these… it works like _multiplying?!_ ” Ninten asked, eyes widening as he stared at the notebook Lloyd was pointing at.

“Yeah! I’m surprised you picked up on that so quickly. Dividing by one-tenth is like multiplying by ten.”

Ninten hummed, leaning in closer to scan over the fresh page of the notebook. They’d been scribbling all over the previous pages over the past few unofficial math lessons, but Lloyd had flipped to a blank page to start working on problems--Ninten tended to get distracted by too much writing in his way, and the noisy environment of the train to Halloween didn’t quite help.

“And one-tenth, that’s zero-point-one. Ten percent. Right?” Ninten asked.

“That’s correct.”

“...Huh. Okay. I think I’m ready to give this one a shot.”

Lloyd nodded and pushed the notebook further into Ninten’s lap. Ninten squinted down at the numbers and idly started to chew on the end of the pencil in his hand.

“All right. Well, seven divided by two-tenths… and if that’s really multiplication in disguise…”

Ninten scrawled out a multiplication problem, then finished it up by circling his messy ‘140’. Lloyd winced.

“Oh. Um. No, actually, this is one of those times when it’s kind of hard to work out how the rules work.”

“Aw, I thought I had it! Darn it!”

“Deep breath, Ninten.”

Ninten drew in a deep breath, then slowly exhaled. “Right. It’s just like school, I’m not gonna get it right away. So where’d I go wrong?”

“It might be easier to write it out as a fraction,” Lloyd explained, scratching out ‘0.2’ and replacing it with ‘2/10’. “See, two tenths. And before we do anything else..?”

“Simplify!” Ninten finished, crossing out ‘2/10’ and writing ‘1/5’.

“There you go. See, we barely talked about that once, and you’ve already mastered it!”

Ninten shrugged with a grin. “It ain’t that hard, ya know.”

“Neither is the rest of this problem. Once you understand how it works, you’ll be solving these problems in a flash.”

“Awesome!” Ninten tapped the fraction with the tip of his pencil. “One fifth. Seven divided by one fifth…”

“Here’s the most important part,” Lloyd said. “Can I see the notebook for a minute?”

Ninten handed the notebook and pencil over, and Lloyd wrote out the problem one more time with a couple of arrows dictating how Ninten could convert the problem to multiplication.

“If you flip the numerator and denominator, just like that… and--”

“And then we gotta simplify five over one,” Ninten interjected, snatching the pencil and correcting Lloyd’s improper fraction. “‘Cause that’s a regular old number!”

“You’re exactly right.”

“Which means… Aw, I know that! That’s straight off the multiplication tables!”

Ninten scribbled ‘35’ and then circled that, too.

“There we go!” Lloyd said. “Who needs school?”

“I might be the first kid in history to get his math lessons from another kid on a train!”

Ninten paused with the pencil above the page, then broke into his crooked grin and skipped a line down.

‘On August 8, 1988, Ninten learned to multiply’

He struggled to spell “decimals” a couple of times.

‘On August 8, 1988, Ninten learned to multiply fractions from the best math teacher and team member he knows!’

“There. It’s history!” Ninten joked.

Lloyd blushed, feeling the flutter in his stomach. “Hey, I thought you said you were bad at spelling! You got everything right except ‘decimal’.”

“Well, that’s on account of you makin’ me study vocabulary, too!”

Lloyd stared down at Ninten’s rounded handwriting and messy numbers. Aside from when he was writing full sentences, he took the lines on the page as nothing more than a suggestion, and all of his mistakes were crossed out with harsh lines thanks to the fact that he’d chewed the pencil eraser away.

“So you weren’t kidding--Lloyd really gives you math lessons?”

Ninten turned to face Ana with his usual grin. “Yeah, all the time! I’m hopin’ I can make it to sixth grade easy this time around.”

Lloyd blinked in surprise… then frowned. Hadn’t Ninten been embarrassed to admit to being held back a grade before? What was so special about Ana that he trusted her like that right away?

“Well, I think you’re smart enough,” Ana said. “You seem to be a good problem-solver, and you have a way of making plans to overcome anything in your way.”

“Gee, thanks!” Ninten replied. “I try real hard to get it right.”

“Well, you’re doing fantastic. You seem to know a lot about PSI, too. Didn’t you mention that you knew a different form of Telepathy?”

Lloyd realized what was going on between Ninten and Ana and looked down at his shoes, fidgeting with his hands. He didn’t have his notebook--Ninten was holding it during his conversation with Ana.

“Well, yeah. Sometimes I can catch a word or two, if it’s real important, but most of the time it’s more like telekinesis. I dunno why they call it Telepathy.”

“That’s interesting! I’m able to speak into others’ minds, but oddly enough, I rarely--if ever--hear a response.”

“Ya think the other person’s gotta know Telepathy, too?”

Ana hummed thoughtfully. “That might be the trick, actually. Here, I’ll try speaking to your mind.”

And just like that, Lloyd was left out of the loop again. It must’ve been a successful connection, because neither of them spoke a word out loud for the rest of the trip.

* * *

Leaving the train station, Ninten scanned the streets around them with growing confusion.

“Uh… where’d everyone go?”

Before anyone else could answer his question, his eyes brightened up and he took off running for the department store down the street. Lloyd had to squint, even with his glasses, to make out the paper sign on the door as he and Ana followed.

“‘Evacuated due to recent hauntings. Will be back in business once the dead stay that way.’” Ninten frowned. “Awful sign to leave on the door. Coulda just said ‘closed for the day’.”

Ana suddenly stopped moving. Her eyes widened, and she turned around to stare at the back of a nearby building in total silence.

“Ana?” Lloyd finally asked.

“Haunted or not, something’s going on here and I don’t like it,” she said.

Then, as if nothing had happened, she turned back to Ninten. “Right! Someone evacuated. Where’d they go?”

“Uh… there’s a kinda beat-up road that way.” Ninten pointed to the curb of a nearby road, where an old dirt road led off into the trees.

“It might be a good idea to start there, then!”

They began their trek to the road, and Ninten bounced forward a few steps before suddenly losing some of that energy.

“I just realized something--this means we gotta wait even _longer_ to replace that dumb ol’ boomerang.”

Despite the fact that Lloyd himself had sold it, he felt hurt at that description. The “dumb ol’ boomerang” was Ninten’s brilliant gift for Lloyd to defend himself with, after all.

“It’s okay,” Lloyd said instead.

“Well, I’d feel better if you had something to fight with. Maybe someone’ll have a weapon you can use once we get to a place that actually has people in it.”

“Maybe.”

One-word answers weren’t the end of the world--Ninten, as concerned as he was about his friends, tended to be oblivious. He wouldn’t notice Lloyd’s tone.

_Lloyd. I know I can’t hear you if you answer me, but I want you to know that I’ve noticed something’s wrong._

Lloyd felt a chill of horror run through him. He hadn’t even thought about Ana listening. He should’ve known, she was psychic in new and different ways, she had to find him out eventually--

_Halloween isn’t just haunted. There’s another presence here, something that isn’t a spirit. I don’t know what it is yet, and I don’t want to distract Ninten, but I want you to keep an eye out. Don’t let it catch you off guard, and if you see something, let me know._

With Ana’s thought finished, Lloyd could breathe again. She didn’t know he was upset. He’d just have to make sure it stayed that way.

“I wonder if the ghosts are gonna teach me a melody,” Ninten said.

“Wait, aren’t the melodies important things that you have to find? Wouldn’t they be hidden somewhere… I don’t know, _nicer_ than a haunted town?” Ana asked.

Ninten shrugged. “Well, I know three so far--one of ‘em came from the first Weird-ified I fought, it was my sister’s baby doll. Then there was one I got from a mama canary, and then the third one came from a singing monkey.”

“How… did you figure all of those things out?”

“Well, ya see, I had to stop the doll from attackin’ my sister, n’ when it was over this music box kicked on. It was real weird.” Ninten hummed, seemingly lost in thought as he trekked on down the uneven road. “After that, I saved Pippi from the graveyard, and while I was in town I went to the store. Real weird guy on the top floor gave me a baby canary, so I found its mom at the bird sanctuary, and she gave me a song too.”

“And the monkey?” Ana asked.

“Well, ya see, I had to go to this zoo--”

Ninten cut himself off with a brief scream of fright as a man jumped into their path.

“Stop! Who are you, and where did you come from?!”

“Jeez! You scared the daylights outta me!” Ninten said. “Well, I’m Ninten, and this is Lloyd and Ana--my friends. Ya see--”

“How do we know you’re not haunted, kid?”

Ninten thought about it, falling into a brief spell of deep concentration. After a few seconds, he met the man’s eyes again.

“I guess ya don’t really have a way to tell, do ya? I can’t come up with anything,” Ninten said bluntly.

Lloyd winced. Did Ninten want them to get killed?!

“The haunted ones make excuses.” The man stepped aside. “Come on! Before _they_ show up!”

“Thanks a million, sir!” Ninten beamed at him and waved Lloyd and Ana along.

Just past the trees, they found a cluster of houses built along hilltops and cliffs. Various people wandered around, holding conversations or baskets of food.

“So this is everyone from Halloween?” Ninten asked.

“Sure is! You kids are looking for a safe place to stay, right?”

“Actually, we’re lookin’ for a special song. Probably in a funny place. Got any ideas?”

“Well… the Rosemary Manor is the strangest place I can think of around here. But it’s locked up tight. You’d have to talk to the Rosemary family… just over there.” The man pointed at a house on the edge of the makeshift town.

“Then we’re gonna do exactly that!”

“Be careful, though… they say the Rosemary Manor isn’t safe.”

Ninten waved him off. “Naw, we’ll be fine!”

* * *

Oddly enough, after Ninten charmed his way into getting the key to the manor, they realized that they probably wouldn’t be as fine as he insisted they would be. Hearing about a creepy mansion was one thing, but actually climbing past the rotting fence to approach its collapsing front was a whole different story. Lloyd could swear the whole sky had gotten darker as they got closer to the ruined building.

“Awful creepy out here,” Ninten remarked as they approached the door. “I sure hope we’re gonna learn a melody for our trouble.”

“I sure hope we don’t get in any trouble in the first place,” Lloyd mumbled.

“We’ll be okay. I’ll make sure of it.”

Ninten put the key in the lock, and the doors swung open with an ominous creak that Lloyd found completely unnecessary. Was this Scooby-Doo or something? He never thought Shaggy would be the sane one of the group, but seeing this stuff in real life was _scary._

They entered the house, and for once Ninten slowed to a stop. His eyes went wide as he took in the furniture, draped in moth-eaten fabric, and the rats scuttling across the damp floor. The ceiling was occasionally dripping onto the floorboards with splashes that echoed through the room.

“...They really meant it about this house, huh?” Ninten said.

“It would seem so,” Ana replied. “But there’s something else here… something that isn’t quite right. I don’t know how to describe it."

"Haunted?" Ninten guessed as they started moving forward again.

"No… It's not quite that. I don't know--"

Ana stumbled backwards when a suit of armor swung an axe down, narrowly avoiding disaster.

"Are you okay?!" Ninten asked, rushing to check her for injuries.

Ana gently pushed him away. "I'm fine, just rattled. It looks like we'll have to watch our step."

Ninten nodded and carefully stepped around the axe. "There are some stairs to… the basement, I think? Should we go down there?"

"Yes," Ana answered immediately.

"Lloyd?"

Unfortunately, Lloyd was all too aware that his own fears would only hold everyone back. Scared out of his mind, he nodded.

"Then down we go!"

Ana and Lloyd both carefully avoided slicing themselves open on the dropped axe and followed Ninten down the stairs.

Each step creaked, and some of them made Lloyd worry that he’d fall right through if he put too much weight on them. Fortunately, this was fairly normal for old, neglected staircases. Nothing to do with haunting.

Then, suddenly, a gust of freezing air brushed his cheek. He spoke too soon.

“GO AWAY,” a passing voice whispered right into his ear.

“Um… did either of you hear that?” Ninten asked.

“Yes. Maybe that was what made the people here think this place was haunted,” Ana said.

“Could be. But it hasn’t hurt us yet, so I say we keep going. Okay?”

“Agreed.”

“Sure,” Lloyd contributed softly.

To his surprise, Ninten turned around. “You okay?”

“Yes. Don’t worry.” Lloyd pulled his worn hoodie tighter around his body.

Having returned his coat to Mrs. Jameson at the Snowman drugstore, Lloyd was back to the clothes he wore to school. His mom kept asking him to replace the jacket, but he knew she wouldn’t like it if he bought something that wasn’t on sale.

“You cold?”

“Yes.” Why not let him believe that?

“I’m sorry. Wish I had a coat to lend ya, but… you know. We’ll add that to the list! Boomerang, and some warmer clothes.”

Lloyd was about to protest Ninten spending more money on him, but suddenly the cold wind blew through again, grabbing around his neck and stopping up all sound. He opened his mouth and nothing came out.

“YOU ARE GOING TO D I E.”

It was louder this time. That was probably a bad thing.

Ninten tried and failed to speak. He glanced at his friends with wide eyes--was that fear or excitement? Lloyd wished he could tell, because that was important to understand what Ninten was about to do. And there was no doubt that Ninten would do _something_ , because spooky voices in haunted mansions seemed to be a perfect indicator to him that he was close to one of these… melody things.

Slowly, the gap-toothed grin crept onto his face.

And then Ninten was sprinting down the stairs.

So it was excitement after all, Lloyd determined as he followed Ninten down. Of course. Ninten may as well have been incapable of any fear… at least, for himself.

At the base of the stairs, Ninten opened the door to a chaotic mess of whispering, laughing, and awful noises from the piano at the far end of the room with air rushing around in all directions and throwing their hair in all directions. It was too much all at once--Lloyd clapped his hands over his ears.

_Lloyd. Ninten. That thing that I was feeling earlier is coming from the piano. I don’t know what’s wrong, though._

Ninten looked down at the floorboards, contemplating what Ana had said. Or, for all Lloyd knew, answering her.

_Well? Any ideas?_

Okay, so he hadn’t spoken to her. And judging from the way she was looking at them, he still wasn’t giving her an answer.

_All right, then I have one._

Ana stepped into the noisy cyclone. Lloyd noticed her cringing back from all the noise, but she kept going anyways as the harsh gusts threw her pigtails around--and blinked frequently as the hair blew back into her face.

“L E A V E .”

The voice boomed over all of the other faint, trailing sounds and caused Ana to physically stumble. Lloyd opened his mouth to call her back, but he still couldn’t make any sound.

Ninten seemed to have the same idea, but he was braver than Lloyd could ever be. He took a step into the room--only to get completely blown back by a gust of wind and nearly fall over.

Okay. This was something Ana had to do. Maybe she was communicating with these voices already. Was that something her PSI was capable of?

She stopped in front of the piano… took a deep breath in, and sat down on the bench.

All of the voices dropped to silence.

Her hands gently rested on the ivory keys, and Lloyd realized for the first time how pale they were--likely from spending so much time shut in that church. She probably only left for school, and there was hardly any sun involved in that. But in a church… well, it had to be either a piano or an organ leading the songs, and clearly Ana knew how to play at least one of them.

Her eyes shut slowly, and her hands drifted to different positions. Lloyd, anticipating her next move, carefully brought his hands away from his ears.

She played four notes.

“SWEET… HARMONY…”

The cold clutch released from all of their throats, and Ana sighed in relief.

“Holy _cow_ , Ana! You got us another melody!” Ninten laughed, sprinting in to the piano. “And I’m pretty sure this house isn’t haunted now, either!”

“So… that was the fourth melody, then?”

Ninten nodded eagerly. “Half the song! Okay, hang on, I’ll show ya what I know so far.”

He swung his backpack around in front of him and fished out the weird shiny thing covered in holes that Lloyd had silently wondered about since he first saw it. Evidently, Ninten had it for an important reason.

“This is an ocarina,” he explained, turning it over in his hands. “Now, I can’t play a piano, but this thing? I picked it up right away! Still don’t know how.”

He lifted it up and held it close to his mouth, then adjusted the position of his fingers. Then he played the beginning of a song, short and simple, ending in the four notes they’d just learned.

“That’s… strange. I’ve never heard that song before,” Ana said, staring up at Ninten.

“Well, neither have I!” he replied. “I figure it’s special to Magicant.”

“And to… this piano. Somehow.”

Ana tilted her head slightly. After a moment’s hesitation, she carefully pulled the music stand back ever so slightly.

“It says… M. Jones. That’s engraved in the wood. I wonder if this person has anything to do with the melodies..?”

“Maybe so. But ya know what’s more important?”

“Um… enlighten me, Ninten.”

He shoved the ocarina back in his bag, then tossed it to the side. “You can play piano, and you never told us! C’mon, ya gotta know something besides the fourth melody, right?”

Ana’s cheeks flushed a little, and she avoided looking at Ninten. “Well, maybe a few songs…”

“Like what?”

“Mostly hymns.”

Unfazed, Ninten bounced on his toes. “Oh, like ya sing in church? Those are real pretty!” 

Ninten sighed, and Lloyd could tell he was exaggerating dreamy happiness as he smiled at some vague, higher point.

“My mom takes me to church every year on Christmas and Easter, nice n’ proper, and the only thing that makes it worthwhile is the singin’! Ya know--Lloyd, you ever been to church?”

“No,” Lloyd admitted, suddenly feeling a lot smaller.

“Well, the music’s _amazing!_ You should go sometime just to hear it,” Ninten said, clearly not bothered by Lloyd’s answer.

Ana cleared her throat. “There’s… more to church than hymns, Ninten.”

“Okay, yeah, I’m sorry. I just like that part a lot! Which ones do you know?”

“Probably not any that you hear at a Christmas or Easter service… these are more… formal.”

Ninten waved her on eagerly. “Well, go on and play one! We’ll see if I know it.”

“Okay… if you say so.”

Ana started to play a gentle tune, smooth and lovely, and it echoed in the basement like each note would never end. Lloyd found it quite nice, if a little slow.

He was startled to hear Ninten start to sing along to it.

“O Lord my God, when I in awesome wonder--”

Ana stopped playing and turned around on the bench to stare at him, all of her usual manners forgotten.

“What?” He grinned. “I said I went to church twice a year, and I love music. I thought you’d figure from there! Our director says I won’t be a soprano by next year, too!”

Ana let out a giggle, then clapped her hands over her mouth as if she were ashamed of it.

“Hey, you can laugh!”

“I-it’s not very polite--”

Ninten scoffed. “Ana, you’re not in church right _now._ It’s okay to have fun!”

“But isn’t this serious, what we’re doing?”

Lloyd stifled a laugh himself, feeling his mood brighten at Ninten’s optimistic eagerness to help Ana loosen up. The way his eyes twinkled as he watched her in anticipation was… oh, wait, Ninten was looking at Lloyd now. _Stop staring!_

“You too?!” Ninten groaned. Oh, so he’d heard Lloyd’s suppressed laughter.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t want to make fun of you. I was laughing, though, I admit it. I just can’t think this is ‘serious’ after you had to use Lifeup on yourself because you jumped on the bed and accidentally hit your head on the bedpost.”

Ana burst into another giggle, then hid her face in her hands immediately after.

Realizing Ana was losing composure, Ninten pressed on with trying to amuse her. “I had a nasty bump on my head, n’ the cleaning lady at the hotel was real upset about the hole I kicked in the wall on my way down.”

That was Ana’s breaking point. She started laughing, full volume, and didn’t try to stop it this time around.

“I can’t believe you destroyed a hotel room!” she exclaimed. “Ninten, you’re out of control!”

“That’s why I got you two around,” Ninten pointed out. “And now that you’re here, I’m gonna teach ya how to have _real_ fun. Next town we stop at, I’m buyin’ you a CD so you can play songs that didn’t come from church!”

“You may not want to start with rock music. It’d be a shock to her system,” Lloyd warned.

“I dunno what that means, but you’re probably right. Hey, ya heard that song on the radio? That… the one about believin’ in you?”

“I think so?”

Ninten poked Ana in the arm. “We’ll start with that one! I just gotta figure out what it’s called first, and where to buy it.”

“You can’t make plans if you don’t know how to actually carry them out,” Ana told him.

“See there? That’s ‘church Ana’ talkin’. Making plans without knowin’ how they’ll work is how I got this far, and I don’t intend to stop!”

Ana looked back and forth between Ninten and Lloyd, a newfound brightness in her eyes. As impossible as it seemed, Ninten’s infectious enthusiasm had changed her outlook--just like it had for Lloyd, over time. And as he took in the pink dress, the hat askew on her head, and the wide smile on her face, Lloyd realized something important: Ninten was being a good friend to Ana by making her feel close enough to them to crack her shell of “proper” behavior. Ninten wasn’t neglecting Lloyd, he was just taking time to make Ana feel welcome.

Here they were, in a formerly-haunted basement, and Ninten somehow made the dirty cement and dusty piano into a place where Ana could learn to have fun. He’d worked his magic on her already.

“We should probably be on our way for now,” she said, standing from the bench.

“Aw, you’re right! Four melodies to go. And a boomerang, and better clothes, and a CD. I might hafta write that down, I’m makin’ a whole shopping list!”

Ninten led them back to the stairs, Ana close behind and Lloyd trailing at the end.

_Lloyd, thank you for convincing me to let him be who he is._

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading, guys!  
> It was totally unnecessary to make a physical copy of Ninten's math work, but I had fun making up handwriting for this goofy boy.  
> Also, there were multiple _wildly different_ drafts of the Halloween chapter, including one in which the kids encounter the hotel Starman and Ninten gets gravely injured, meaning Ana has to drain her PSI ending the fight and therefore she's too weak to heal him. However, as much as that would add to Lloyd's character, it was just too dark for me to throw in this series at this point.  
> In case you were wondering, Ana's hymn is "How Great Thou Art", and the newer song Ninten references is "Pollyanna" off the Mother soundtrack CD.  
> I'm thinking maybe Easter/Youngtown comes next... which means that draft will finally see the light of day, and who knows what havoc it will bring?  
> Also, I still check in on the poll, and it's 9-3 in favor of Ninten/Lloyd right now. Everyone on this site is a disaster! (It's okay, I'm having a lot of fun planning out their arc...)  
> Comments and criticism are always welcome!


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